Journey to the Center of the Cramps is a revised version of Dick Porter’s previous biography of the band, written in 2007 before Lux’s untimely and unexpected death stopped the band in its tracks in 2009. If any band’s time was cut too short, it was the Cramps. It’s not like they weren’t given their kudos while they were active, but they completely missed an era where punk bands are worshipped just as much as the popular rock bands they spent years trying to be different from. Dick Porter’s telling of the band’s story does just that.
Fueled by early rock ‘n’ roll, EC Horror comics of the 1950s, and drive-in B movies, Porter details the story of Erick Purkhiser (Lux Interior) and Kristy Wallace (Poison Ivy Rorschach). Two kids who met in college in California were credited with creating a genre in the 1970s New York City punk rock scene. By all accounts, they were outliers in the Bowery along with other CBGB bands and were essentially known as the hillbilly counterpart of the band Television.
The Cramps were always unique and unable to be put into a genre box, which shines through in Porter’s writing. If you are looking for the comprehensive telling of the band’s story, look no further than this book. The term psychobilly was coined to describe their sound. The Cramps sort of (and believe no one hates using this phrase more than I do) Forrest Gumped their way through rock music, being a CBGB band, but also friends with people like Alex Chilton.
Each chapter starts off with a historic event. The type of history is dependent on what the chapter is talking about related to the Cramps, but mostly related to music. While it does feel monotone in some spaces, it works in the context of the book. As members leave, I do like that Porter ties up loose ends and tells what happened to them at the end of the chapter rather than waiting until the end of the book.
With Lux and Ivy being the only two consistent members, their cut-and-pasted interview responses intertwined with Dick Porter’s straight-man narration work as a foil for the telling of the Cramps’ story in their own words. A frustrating, but understandable, aspect of the interviews was that, outside of the citations in the back, there isn’t any way to confirm what responses came from when. It was hard to tell if these were retrospective or around the time the events actually occurred.
The end of the book would have seemed a little rushed if the band’s activity wasn’t so scant the last fifteen-ish years of their career. With lineup changes, the gaps between records were sometimes longer than others, but the Cramps chugged along, mostly on the rim of pop culture up until Lux’s passing. Surprisingly missing is any mention of the band’s song “Goo Goo Muck” in Tim Burton’s Addams Family spinoff, Wednesday. A moment that reintroduced a newer generation of kids to the band, even if it was about fifteen years too late.
Outside of being a book about the band’s origins, music, the various members, and exploits, it’s no surprise that the center of the Cramps was Lux and Ivy. The book isn’t only a love letter to one of punk rock’s most beloved bands, but also the love story of Lux and Ivy’s relationship. One does not need to be a fan to appreciate that aspect of the Cramps’ story.
Journey to the Center of the Cramps is published by Omnibus Press and can be purchased here.
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